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Attention! The US Economy closes for business in 2027! Please make your final selections…

**Posted by Phineas

In this latest installment of Firewall, Bill Whittle highlights an amazing exchange between Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and the tax-cheating nitwit who runs our Treasury Department, Timothy Geithner. In it, Ryan points out that spiraling debt means the US economy according to the administration’s own numbers will cease to operate around 2027. Geithner agrees — and then admits there is no plan to deal with the problem:

Scary, isn’t it? And infuriating; the administration knows full-well that its policies will lead to a Greece-like fiscal meltdown, and yet they act as unconcerned as the grasshopper in the face of approaching winter.

Except in this case, the Democratic grasshoppers are endangering all our futures, not just their own.

As Whittle points out (and expounds on at greater length in this video. Do watch.), the problem is entitlement spending. We have enough revenue to pay for all the functions of government from the military to the post office, but the burgeoning costs of entitlements are forcing us to spend more and more and borrow more and more. At this time, we borrow just over forty cents of every dollar the federal government spends. That money has to be paid back with interest, and that interest will go up as our credit gets further downgraded. (Which, on the current path, is almost inevitable.) And that’s just what we’re borrowing now; as time goes on and entitlement spending increases thanks to an aging population and the costs of ObamaCare, there will be a need to borrow even greater amounts as a percentage of total spending, until one day our creditors wake up and realize we’ll never be able to meet our payments, and so stop lending us any more.

At which point the entitlement system collapses, our economy shuts down, and we come to the end of that downward spiral only to find ourselves not in a paradise of Unicorns and lollipops, but on the burning streets of Athens.

Now, if I were a cynic, I’d say that’s the plan in the back of the progressives’ minds: “reforms” that only seem to solve the problem, but actually set up greater crises that will eventually have the public demanding “progressive” solutions — greater government intervention and direction of the economy, with higher taxes to pay for it all. It’s Marxist philosopher Andre Gorz‘s concept of “non-reformist reforms.”

But… nah. I couldn’t be that much of a cynic, could I?

Yes. I. can.

It doesn’t have to be this way, though. While Whittle is, by his own description, running around with his hair on fire screaming warnings (and justly so), we have choices. Republicans have proposed three alternative budgets in recent weeks, any one of which will solve our entitlement crisis, restrain spending (the root of the problem), and emphasize pro-growth policies that will allow us to eventually balance the budget, pay off our debts, and prosper.

But, let’s be honest. That will only happen if We The People do what it takes this November to make it happen: defeat Barack Obama, take the Senate, and hold the House. The Democrats must be crushed. (1)

Otherwise 2012 may be the final bell before 2027.

RELATED: If you want to see “non-reformist reformism” in action, have a look at Steven Den Beste’s essay on Obama’s preferred outcome in the ObamaCare case now before the Supreme Court.

Footnote:

(1) In a peaceful, electoral manner, of course. Just in case some Lefty was about to start hyperventilating about “violent rhetoric.” They’re so excitable.

3 thoughts on “Attention! The US Economy closes for business in 2027! Please make your final selections…”

With all the hyper-regulating that’s already come down the pike, we’ll be lucky to survive 2013 if Duh-1 is re-elected.

Unless, of course, you happen to be a union bigwhig or appointed exec of Government Motors or exec of GE or a big-time Goldman Sachs donor.

Life won’t be easy for old folks like me, but the one saving grace to all this is that the so-called entitled will be scrounging around, dumpster diving and all just to survive. And they won’t have the perseverance techniques that we old folks have, and they’ll end up wondering why their messiah can’t do anything to help them.

Little do they know it’s not a matter of “can’t,” it will be a matter of “won’t.”

I’m guessing the words “unfunded liability” will become very scary to Americans in about the year 2026. Some of us cheered for Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society way back when, and many still do unfortunately. But I’m convinced that our problems aren’t political, they are social. Simply Americans who refuse to plan, work, and be responsible for their own lives and futures.

1. from bondage to spiritual faith;
2. from spiritual faith to great courage;
3. from courage to liberty;
4. from liberty to abundance;
5. from abundance to complacency;
6. from complacency to apathy;
7. from apathy to dependence;
8. from dependence back into bondage’

We’re right about at Step 8 right now, and that step back into bondage could be a perilous one.